Spooktober In The 12 Worlds

Spooktober, Eh?

2. Vanish

---

That night in the forest, there were only two sounds he could hear. The first was the harsh, crisp crunching of the ground under his feet as he ran, twigs snapping and leaves crackling as if the very land wished to betray him. The second was his own breathing, the laboured gasps and heavy panting through which he could hardly think.
He was in the deep end, now. He stopped, half bent over and propped up on one arm against a tree as he drank in the midnight breeze. That thing, whatever it could be described as, was somewhere, unless the others had managed to put it down. Though, judging by the screams he heard from the camp as he ran off, he didn't put too much hope in that.
After a few more minutes of heaving in the night air, the man reached into his coat, and from it pulled out a small, silvery flask. His hands slipped around the cap all over, before he finally ripped it open and drowned himself in its contents, chugging the bottle in a single gulp.
Just as quicky as he had drank from the flask, he tore it from his lips with a fit of raspyt coughs. As he heaved again, it seemed a faint, pale yellow mist hung in the air from his mouth, and the veins that criss-crossed his hands became thick.
Collapsing to the forest floor, he crashed against a thick old tree, one hand clawing at its dry and rough bark while the other scrambled around the tinder-dry leaf litter. A minute later, he stopped, leaning back against the tree.
He sat there in silence, for a moment. Then, he laughed to himself, softly at first but soon growing to a manic giggling as he rose to his feet, perched against the bark for support as his mouth split open in laughter. Hunched over with with his cacjling he stayed there for a few moments. Then, he turned to the forest, safe.
Than he noticed he wasn't anymore.
There was still a tree where ha had lay, and for a few metres in around the forest seemed perfectly as it had been. Yet, through a trick of the light or a fault of his mind it seemed that beyond it there was simply... nothing.
It was cold. It had been cold the whole night, of course, aside from that beautiful bonfire they danced around earlier, before thise. Yet, this was a different cold, a cold that put a chill in spine and bone and soul all the same, that seemed to seep into cracks and worm into his eyes and mind. It warped and shifted, growing closer as the shadows that ate the light of the moon crept deeper in, and the small circle of the world shrank ever smaller.
He screamed, but was silent. Thrashed around, curled up on the ground, yet nothing happened as he hurled his flask into the dark, and again reached into his cloak, this time drawing a dagger of gold that burned in the air. Yet, its fire was weak, and the air was cold, and it sapped and flickered in the breeze that was still until it froze like a shard of ice, and he dropped it to the ground, hand charred from the frost.
Finally, the man stopped, his one good hand grasping the other as he stood, hunched, waiting for what was to come. And of course, he came.
First, a hole deep and shallow ripped through the midnight veil before him, rippling shadows like waves from where it was cut. The waves warped the light and filled the air with static and haze, and looking from the corners of his fixed eyes he half imagined little streaks of black on black reach out from them.
Then, he spoke.
"Hello There, Mr Harvey."
As he spoke it seemed like his voice, his growl as deep as bedrock, came over the man in waves from all sides to drown him under. His sight grew warped, shapes where there were none, colours faded into nothing as he collapsed to a kneel before the apparition, the being that crept out from the monochrome rainbow that cut through the sky. A slim form, a tall form, dark on white on dark with streaks piercing out from it like the points of a compass star gone cold and dark.
He walked forwards, and even with the man's cloudey gaze he could not fail to see, and fear. He wore a dark suit, black jacket and tie seeming to seep like into the white shirt like cloudy ink into water. For a face, there wasn't, or maybe there was, he couldn't see since ever second he tried to look at where it should be his eyes burned and vision flared with streaks of blinding flame dancing across his gaze.
"Well, it's good I have you here and now. Wouldn't want to risk you disappearing into the woods, now would we? No, that simply wouldn't do, having you leave it all behind without warning. No, no, not a man like you, Professor, not a man of your caliber."
The man almost breathed easy at that, almost flared with hope. Then, He reached out, and a hand came crashing down on his shoulder. Heavy and cold like frozen stone, again he cried out, and again he was silent, silenced.
"Still, I suppose there's one more lesson you should learn.
The darkness that abounded grew bright and blinding, the cold seared his flesh. The hole that hung in the air grew, until it engulfed everything, and yet could barely be seen.
"It is easy to make a man disappear, when it seems the whole world wishes nothing more than to never see them at all."
Then, it all came crashing down.
------ That night in the forest, there were two sounds. The wind in the trees shook and shifted, their leaves rustling in the sky like a thousand pages of paper crushed up and thrown away across the sky.
And down below, a mouse ran across the ground, feet scampering across the leaf litter with crisp crunching. Just outside a small clearing, where no trees stood and the soil was bare, a small, silvery little thing sparkled in the moonlight. The little mouse inched closer, caught by the pungent fragrance of some pale yellow mist that hung in the air. It inched closer, to the gaping mouth of the silvery thing, where a pool had gathered on the soil. The mouse drew near, and drank from it.
Then, it leapt backwards, screeching in pain and writhing on the forest floor, rolling about without control. As it shrieked and spasmed, its sounds echoed across the forest.
The, an owl came from the midnight air, swooping down and ripping the beast into the sky.
Two creatures would not escape their fates that night

7. Thorn


8. Howl


11. Escape

The chase was on.
The chase was still on.
The chase had been on for six hours by now and, as far as Commander Ralph Milligan was concerned, it damn well should have been off by now.
Still shivering even under thick layers of wool and oilskin, with binoculars pressed tight to his eyes against the whipping wind and rain of the Warp that crashed down on him on the ship's superstructure where he stood, he half cursed whatever prey he was tracking down for their rudeness in not dying, and left his remaining anger for whatever Flag Rank had decided to dump him and his vessel on some wild goose chase across a Galewind-grade Warp Storm.
Under his command, the Favour-Class destroyer UCS Fortune had already bagged itself four prize blockade runners with their cargoes headed towards Fuhrati ports, and run down a pair of corsairs across the Green-12 Trans-Warp Route. All told, a very successful two months for a very successful skipper, and he'd made sure the crew were well aware of how much he appreciated their efforts back on shore.
And yet, this time, things just weren't quite right. Shaken off from a patrol station by a flash signal from Warp Fleet HQ, Milligan and the XO, Lieutenant Taimar Attar, had a feeling something strange was afoot when the message ordered them to maintain absolute signals silence throughout the hunt, and ordered them to return directly to UCNB Pulau Yunauh at speed the moment they confirmed the target's sinking.
A rather elaborate brief for a simple blockade runner on the loose, Attar pointed out, but they agreed that as far as their actual course of action was concerned it would hardly matter. Sinking shipping was what they were there to do, and so sinking this particular piece shipping was what they would get done, strange orders or no.
This blase attitude had run out after about spent two hours, fruitlessly spent sailing around the new assigned sector they were told to patrol, without having spotted so much as a particularly bothersome kraken. By now the novelty of a particularly interesting piece of prey had worn off, and Milligan found himself almost bored with the game.
Then, from that whirling void of nothing, came something.
"Contact, contact, bearing Zero-Three-Zero, range ten naut-miles!"
"Clear On, make your heading Zero-Three-Zero, increase speed to full!"
Quick as a flash, Milligan bolted from where he stood peering across the Warp up into the bridge. Open air and thus entirely exposed to the elements save for a thick tarp sheeting stretched over it, the improvements in visibility more than made up for it. Racing to the bridge, he arrived to see Attar finished with her orders to the helmsman and wa already barking instructions to the sensor suite, before turning to face him.
"We've got her, skipper. Ten miles off and speed estimate at thirty over knots on a course practically ruler-straight, I'd say she's a corsair making another run for a Green Convoy at speed. You'd almost wonder what the fuss is all about, but I wouldn't say no to painting a new mark on A-Turret."
Milligan grew a smirk at that, before stooping to peer through the much more effective lookout's scope. His smile only grew with what he saw. There, through the thick sleet of rain and heavy clouds, a small black dot that rose and fell with the waves drove forth throw the Warp, right at the edge of their patrol zone.
"Neither would I, XO. Run 'er down or stay back and take it slow?"
Before she could answer, the fresh faced ensign seated at the sensor display stirred, frantically toggling his instruments as his screen was turned into a violent, blank haze. The two senior officers caught it immediately, Milligan's eyes narrowing.
"What the devil are you doing?"
"Sensor's buggered, Sir, swamped with noise!"
Attar slipped past the two of them to the starboard lookout posts further forwards, Milligan stepping back to the center of his bridge. He wasn't too worried, after all the very Warp itself seemed to hate electronic equipment with a fury on a good day and so such emission jamming was hardly a rare occurrence. He'd rely on the lookouts and optics, already being checked on by his XO, for his situational awareness, and if the damn Wave-Emissions Sensors weren't ready by the time they closed to fire he'd put good money on the gunnery crews hitting the thing on the first shot at any range anyways.
Still, in the back of his mind he had to admit this was a little strange. Sensor noise overload was a common enough issue, but the new scrubbers did a good job at clearing it out, and while the Warp storm might have been unpleasant it was hardly the most intense he'd sailed in, certainly not the sort to bring about as severe of a jam as this. Then, came another complication, as Attar turned away from the lookout's scope and called out across the windswept bridge.
"Sight's empty, target's vanished into the storm probably. Orders, Sir?"
Now this, this was not good at all. Milligan moved to the pintle where the heavy telescope, as large as his arm, was mounted, checking for himself. Sure enough, even as he panned the optics across the waves there was nothing in sight, save for the stormclouds and peeling shower.
And, if his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, a faint greenish mist that hung in the air for a brief second, before being blown away by the storm winds. Strange.
"Chart a route to the Green-Eye and hold station there. Double the lookouts on all sides and tell them to pick out anything, anything, at all different or strange they see. Nine tenths of it'll be rubbish, but that last bit might get us our prize."